At 7:30 am, an employee from Best Buy came out with papers. He began passing them out and when one was handed to me I immediately looked at it, and in the top right corner it held a number. I was 16 of 18. There was not twenty-eight consoles, there were only sixteen. I watched as two people behind me got a sheet as well, and then after that, there were nothing but upset people as the line had grown to around twenty-two people by that point.
The paper also said that the store opens at 9 am, and that if we are not back by 10 am that our Xbox 360 would go to the floor to be sold to someone else. I now needed to kill an hour and a half before I could go collect my Xbox 360. My first thought was to get somewhere warm so I could feel my toes again, and also to get something to eat. I walked for fifteen minutes to the closest mall and went to Tim Horton’s. I talked to some other people that were standing in line. They were worried they wouldn’t make it. The hot chocolate I ordered was far too hot, but I drank it down quickly anyways. Waiting in sub-zero temperatures for over an hour was chilling to the bone, so heat was all that was important at that point.
I wonder how many people lined up at the only other Best Buy location in Ottawa. How many were just too far back in the line? How many were turned away?
On the ride to Best Buy I was getting a little paranoid of others on the bus, as some of them looked like “gamers”, and I knew there were a limited amount of consoles available. Had I been right, and even two of those people were going to Best Buy and were able to rush and get there before me, I would not have gotten a ticket to purchase an Xbox 360 that day.
One of the first questions from the others was “are you going to sell yours on eBay?” For most of the people in the list, the answer as a quick and sharp “no!”
I was pretty sure they would not have Call of Duty 2, one of the games I want to buy, so I might just start off with some of the online demos and whatnot for the first day or two anyways.